Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Americans: Your (Insert Word Here)-in-Chief

Whoever coined the term 'to the victor
goes the spoils' did not have President Barack Obama's official
inauguration party in mind.

They
knocked on doors for him and helped him win re-election, but when Obama
supporters put on their tuxedos and ball gowns to celebrate the start
of his second term in office, they feasted on pretzels, peanuts and
Cheez-its.

'This is the
food? I'm not too thrilled about it. It's for the birds,' said Ben
Shelly, who helped mobilize support for Obama on the Navajo reservation
in Arizona.

How do we know? Because the President of the United States just said
so. President Obama used the occasion of his second inaugural address to
take on the question of moral hazard emanating from our burgeoning
entitlement state. In his estimate, there is no such risk — or at least
none worth the mention.Here is the inaugural passage in question:

…We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our
lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden
illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we
make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security
– these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great. [emphasis added]

With these words, the president 1) made it clear he is aware many
Americans are troubled by the seemingly relentless expansion of
government entitlement benefits and its impact on our way of life, and) 2
also made it clear that he totally dismisses their concerns.

Obama’s declaration is astonishing and bold–and not in a good way.
This is an extremely peculiar (and, indeed, a peculiarly extreme)
formulation—and posture—for a President of all the people to adopt.Consider the following basic facts this assertion ignores:

– According to the most recent HHS figures, over 12 million working
age Americans are cashing government disability benefits: A larger total
than those cashing paychecks from the entire US manufacturing sector;

– Over twice as many Americans are obtaining “means tested”
anti-poverty benefits from the government as are receiving old-age
pension payments from Social Security;

– Only about a tenth of the increase in Americans depending on
benefits from government entitlement programs can be explained by the
aging of the US population per se;

– The Social Security and Medicare programs cannot cover their own
outlay commitments on the basis of the contributions of the workers they
“insure”: According to the actuaries for those two government trust
funds, tens of trillions of dollars of future benefits have been
promised in excess of expected future Social Security/Medicare funding
streams.

We could go on–but you get the point.

No entitlement problem today? Really? Enormously powerful as the
office he commands may be, the president is not invested with authority
to make facts disappear.

We could alleviate a bit of this if Obama kicked in his "fair share". Why not put him a higher tax bracket or reduce his salary or compel himto vacation locally?

Just hours before he died in a
terrorist attack at the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Ambassador Chris
Stevens sent a cable to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton painting a
chaotic, violent portrait of the eastern Libya city and warning that
local militias were threatening to pull the security they afforded U.S.
officials.

Militia leaders told U.S. officials just two
days before the attack that they were angered by U.S. support of a
particular candidate for Libyan prime minister and warned “they would
not continue to guarantee security in Benghazi, a critical function they
asserted they were currently providing,” Stevens wrote in the cable the
morning of Sept. 11, 2012. He also cited several other episodes that
raised questions about the reliability of local Libya security.

“Growing
problems with security would discourage foreign investment and led to
persistent economic stagnation in eastern Libya,” Stevens cautioned.

The Washington Guardian
obtained a copy of the memo, a weekly summary of events in Libya dated
just hours before a band of terrorists struck the unofficial U.S.
consulate in Benghazi and a neaby annex building where the CIA operated,
killing the ambassador and three other Americans.

Did Hillary Clinton hand this memo to Obama while he was in the situation room or couldn't she find him?